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It Came From Space!
It Came From Space! is the second issue of Jump Leads. It follows on several hours from the events of Training Day. Plot To be added later. Appearances Characters *Richard Lewellyn *Thomas Meaney *Anderson * Allen *Lloyd *Newman *Torn *Tudyk Publication History *Published as part of Jump Leads Volume 1: Tales from the Flurry by SoulGeek Publishing in February 2009. *A self-published eBook edition of the first issue containing additional materials from Tales from the Flurry went up on Wowio on September 3rd, 2010. Extra Continuity * Apparently the Flurry contains at least one book. * Start of a trend where Meaney and Llewellyn are arrested at the start of the issue. This happens again in Rogues and Scallywags, also written by Ben Paddon. * Running gag: Use of "Glod" where one might say "God" instead. * Llewellyn's home universe doesn't have talking computers, apparently because they're "bloody stupid". ** This is contradicted, in effect, by the prequel story The Offer. Llewellyn shares his apartment with a talking Toaster. * In some Universes, Earth is part of a Pan-Galactic Union. In the Universe presented in this story, Earth is run by one unifying government. * This is the first and, to date, only time that Llewellyn has paid Meaney a compliment (although he did precede it with a status-quo maintaining insult). * Llewellyn is quite happy to let the crew die at the hands of the alien monster, which is a stark contrast to his attitude towards the Rogue camp in Rogues and Scallywags. **The circumstances are different, however. In Rogues and Scallywags, the Rogue camp are arguably innocents. In It Came From Space!, it's clear that the alien presents an insurmountable obstacle and one that will, in all likelihood, kill everyone on board. Llewellyn sees this as a No Win Scenario and is quite happy to leave under those circumstances. ** Converse, Meaney first displays his characteristic "Help the helpless, keep the peace" attitude, even in the face of near certain death. * For a moment, Llewellyn seems quite prepared to Jump away without Meaney. He changes his mind, however. Llewellyn would later say that he'd have no problem Jumping without Meaney in a recorded message played during Who Wants To Rule The World?. * Running gag: First use of "Wait, what?" * The number 17 makes an appearance on page 39. Cultural References * Llewellyn suggests that Meaney might be better-suited to a job working for fast food chain McDonald's. * Ship's Captain Tudyk is named for Alan Tudyk, perhaps best known as Wash in Joss Whedon's Firefly franchise. * Anderson is named after Richard Dean Anderson who has appeared in MacGyver and Stargate: SG-1, amongst other shows. * Lloyd is named after Sabrina Lloyd, who played Wade in the first three seasons of Sliders (which, incidentally, is another scifi series about travelling to parallel universes and is a show that was specifically mentioned by co-creator Ben Paddon as an inspiration for Jump Leads). * Head of Security Newman is named for Scottish actor Alec Newman, who played Paul Atreides in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert's_Dune the American SciFi Channel's Dune miniseries]. * Newman's short stature is perhaps a reference to the character of Lord Farquaad from the Shrek movie series. * Torn is named for actor Rip Torn, who has appeared in numerous TV shows and movies including Robocop 3 and Men in Black. * Torn's design has been compared to the Cloverfield monster, although at the time the comic went out neither Ben Paddon nor JjAR had seen the film. * Llewellyn calls Newman "the Spleen", a reference to Paul Reubens' character in the 1999 superhero comedy movie Mystery Men. * Llewellyn mocks the ship's talking computer. Talking computers are something of a fixture in modern science fiction. * The ship's unseen Engineer is named Allen, after Tim Allen who appeared as Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor in the TV series Home Improvement, Buzz Lightyear in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Story_(franchise) Toy Story movies] and as Jason Nesmith in the 1999 scifi-comedy movie Galaxy Quest. * The line used by Tudyk when meeting Llewellyn and Meaney is almost identical to a line from the All Your Base meme. Whether this is intentional is unknown. Trivia *This story is an homage to the "running from a monster in an enclosed ship" subgenre of scifi, which probably has a much shorter, much nicer name. * An earlier draft of this story penned in late 2006 featured the same characters, but instead they were located on a space station that was slowly descending into a Sun which, it would turn out, was actually a Wormhole. This version of the story was scrapped at an early stage, although it's interesting to note that this would later become the plot for the Doctor Who episode "42" and the British scifi movie Sunshine. * The first seven pages of this issue are based on an earlier, longer version of the script. The script in its final form was simply too long, so Ben significantly shorted it. Unfortunately he sent both scripts to JjAR, and the longer one was initially used by mistake. The shorter script is used from the interrogation scene on page 8 onwards. *The Service Droids are an homage of sorts to the Skutters from Red Dwarf. ** Ben Paddon has openly admitted that this story has roots in a Red Dwarf fanfic he wrote several years prior. * The small "Bleep Bleep" panel at the beginning of page 16 wasn't in the original artwork JjAR sent to Ben Paddon. Paddon added that panel using a cropped segment of the sixth (now the seventh) panel of the page because it wasn't immediately clear that Tudyk was answering his communicator. To date, this is the only time Ben Paddon has made any additions or alterations to JjAR's artwork. * Torn's design hadn't been finalized by JjAR when he had his first appearance on page 19. He spends most of his time in the shadows until page 24, when we get our first real look at his face, and he is revealed in full on page 38. * The idea of having the entire event be a historical re-enactment was largely inspired by Paddon's childhood. His father was a member of a medieval re-enactment group who would travel to events across the UK and re-enact historical battles. External links *[http://www.jump-leads.com/comic/31 It Came From Space! at Jump-Leads.com] Category:Comic issues